Cons:

Here's the skinny on Mercenaries 2: It's a great game full of fun ways to detonate or otherwise annihilate a variety of military targets, but it also has trouble with its framerate, poorly blended textures and sometimes shoddy character modeling. Really, it comes down to a question of whether or not you're willing to sacrifice some graphical fidelity and artistry for a pretty hefty helping of raw destructive power. So although Mercenaries 2 may stumble technically in certain areas, the core gameplay provides a surprising amount of variety in an enormous explorable environment... and enough insane ordnance to blow the landscape to little pieces a hundred times over.

I Will Never End This Mayhem

Regardless of which of the three mercenaries you choose to play as, the story remains largely unchanged. You get shafted by a former employer and embark on a campaign of murderous vengeance that eventually engulfs all of Venezuela in a conflict with global ramifications. Unfortunately, that means that you spend most of the game shooting the crap out of Venezuelan revolutionaries whose voice acting is performed with all of the cultural delicacy of Eric Cartman's impression of "Hennifer Lopez." Ultimately, the battle raging in Venezuela becomes such a big deal that China and "Allied" forces (meaning the United States) need to get their hands dirty as well complete with their own requisite racially insensitive caricatures, so at least everyone gets some ribbing.

All of the ridiculous story exposition is totally beside the point however, because it's all just so much window dressing. The real heart of Mercenaries 2 is in the actual activity of decimation on a massive scale, and the wealth of tools available to help you level the landscape.

It doesn't take long to acquire a support crew, so after only an hour or so you should be able to hijack anything you want (before you can hijack helicopters, you need to have a mechanic in your employ). Hijacking things is one of the best features of Mercs 2 as it gives you instant access to almost every piece of equipment and functions as a pretty handy offensive tactic. Why blow up a tank when you can just hijack it and end up having a useful addition to your arsenal instead of a worthless hunk of smoldering metal?

One of the secondary bonuses of hijacking is the tenuous disguise that the practice offers, because once you've grabbed a jeep or an APC most people (even soldiers and revolutionaries) will naturally assume that you work for whoever's logo is painted on the side. While this is very useful for sneaking into enemy territory and icing a high-value target, the downside is that it works both ways, so even if you happen to score a sweet enemy chopper, you might end up getting shot down by your own allies because they don't know that their beloved merc is piloting it. Still, this little disguise wrinkle adds a cool bit of strategy to all of the raw annihilation.